Keep Moving
by benignmilitancy
Summary: Let Eggman crash through the wall at any second; he just has to keep running, keep pumping his legs, as rails whine in their sockets. Some small bit of serendipity will find him. It has to.


The last security door crashes open as a blue bullet fires through it, curdling out gaseous smoke. Egg Destroyers, faithful to their last, train their barrels on him. In the time it takes them to aim their reticules, he's already cleaved them into glitched, sparking halves.

Once he arrives at the heart of the lab, Sonic pretends to ring an invisible doorbell, checks an imaginary wristwatch. He pounds his fist against the battered metal of a locked gate, letting the thrash echo in the dusty air. "Knock, knock, your pizza's here. Gonna get cold!"

Silence reigns in the cavernous lab, prompting him to frown, puzzled. Not like him to be late. Or quiet, for that matter.

He shrugs. "Alright, Egghead, throw your tantrum." Shifting, he lunges his legs to warm them up before the big shebang. Pushing down on his calves, he announces to whoever may be listening: "I'm gonna give ya till the count of _three_—"

He doesn't even reach one. Slats retract from the opposite wall and explode automatic fire in a lightning chorus. Quick reflexes wrench him out of the way before they can even nick him, much less smear him.

Sonic's frown only deepens as he hits the floor, his sneakers making a slight squeak on its glossy surface. Dude, it's not like he's even _trying._

"Eggman?"

And then it hits him with such obviousness that he has to slap a hand to his forehead. Oh, no. Did he get lost in his _own _base?

"Looks like a no-show, Tails." He shakes his snowy, unresponsive communicator. " …Tails?"

He gives the device another shake and sighs. Oh, well. Must be too deep underground to get a proper signal. Better hoof it.

Giving the whole thing a flippant shrug, Sonic dashes for the exit.

* * *

He swears he must be going in circles. There's no map for this place, so he can't really tell for sure, but he's fairly certain he's kicked up these Destroyer carcasses before. Their overturned domes whirl from the currents he produces like teacups, rattling against one another.

Sonic orbits the same lab, again and again, when he decides to stop and mark his place. Something to establish his location.

Reaching back, he plucks off a fine quill behind his ear with a slight wince. He turns it in his fingers; even in this dark, his hide still emits a blue bright enough to discern from the rest of his surroundings. He tucks the quill into a crevice in the wall. Isn't perfect, but it'll have to do.

And even though it's possibly the most idiotic thing he can do, he asks the quivering silence once more: "Eggman?"

* * *

He's starting to get a little apprehensive. Mazes of corridors wind endlessly under his feet, all filled with cold gray silence. Even the computers, which would normally at this time blare with gaudy test messages of the old guy's face, are switched off.

There's gotta be a reason for this. Maybe Egghead wants to psyche him out. Y'know, play mind games. Wouldn't put it past him.

He doesn't see his quill-marker again, but it doesn't worry him too much. In a lab this huge, it's like trying to find a hedgehog in a haystack.

"Heh."

Laughing at his own jokes now.

Okay, he's really gotta find Eggman.

* * *

Sonic's never particularly noticed the sound of his own feet moving before. The solid patter they make on the polished steel floors is enough to wig him out a little. They sound like chaingun fire, a steady beat upon a monochromatic metal sea.

"Tails?" He tries the communicator again, only to meet sheer silence. He's forgotten the battery has died.

* * *

"Eggman, this isn't _funny."_

It must have stopped being funny, what? Two hours ago? Three?

Sonic's shoes scrape rusted catwalk as he jogs. He looks up at a forest of dead cables, ears pricked to their slow, creaking swing, when another thought strikes him.

He's…

"No." Sonic shakes his head. "This is a-lllll just a prank."

But… You know, Eggman _is _getting up there in age. He tends to wind up hacking up a lung whenever he erupts into maniacal laughter. His complexion turns bright red at the slightest provocation.

The notion brings a a nervous chuckle bubbling to his lips. Nah. Eggman's gonna be here ranting and raving at him like always, and he'll say his cheesy quips while destroying his enormous killer robot blender or whatever, and things'll go back to normal.

Besides, he thinks, if on the slight off-chance doc really did, uh, _croak _somewhere, how long would it take for anyone to notice?

How long?

* * *

Sonic thinks he hears a noise that sounds like him, but it's not. It belongs to a boiler that has fallen. The drum reverberates a full, brassy echo and erupts gooseflesh on his arms when it smacks the floor before him. This place is a death trap.

* * *

"So a hedgehog and a fox walk into a bar. Bartender looks at the hedgehog and says, he says, aw heck _Eggman where are you?"_

* * *

He stops and stares at the first security door he's trashed. Really stares at it. Like a Rorschach, kind of, paint scorched and metal peeled back like flower petals. He shot through it like a birthday boy busting through cake.

Sonic taps one toe to the ground as he grips his dead communicator, feeling its reassuring weight press against his gloved palm. If this is the first security door, he must not be that far off from a control room. Maybe he can access a PA system. Doc has to have a spare microphone around.

* * *

"Are you _kidding_ me?"

White noise snarls from every speaker. Cables are cut. Thumbing on the call buttons does absolutely nothing.

Sonic smashes his fists and feet against the console, against the unresponsive knobs and switches, with a simmering, long-throated cry, until he realizes what he really rails against is his past self for locking him in here. If he'd have known he'd cause himself this much trouble, he'd have tied himself to a much-needed rope on a tree outside the base somewhere.

Panting, he slumps his back against chilled metal. He stuffs his head between his knees and screams.

* * *

Just keep moving.

Trouble finds him at the most inopportune times, and for fifteen years he's preferred it that way. Let Eggman crash through the wall at any second; he just has to keep running, keep pumping his legs, as rails whine in their sockets. Some small bit of serendipity will find him. It has to.

* * *

His quill. He whips so quickly past it that it draws a thin line of blood from his cheek, and he slaps a hand to it as if it's a mosquito sting.

And he— Well, he has to laugh again. Eggman fires entire armaments at him on a frighteningly regular basis, but it's his own stupidity that'll probably kill him.

* * *

Sonic runs past a missile storage chamber and gazes at the ordered rows of nosecones. Checkered in red-black and stamped with the old man's visage, one for each continent.

He shifts from foot to foot, restless. If only Tails were here, he'd know the right wires to cut to turn these nukes into duds— He's done it before. Or does that wire-cutting thing only happen in movies?

He presses his fist to his brow. _Stop it._

Two stories stretch both ways from the catwalk on which he stands. He doesn't even dare spit over the side to measure the distance, just in case something fragile will detonate.

Craning his neck, he contemplates the missiles. Sonic can't help but wonder how small he must look beside one of these things.

Moments later a thunderous _bang _rattles him clear through to his bone marrow. He can't run fast enough.

* * *

There he is, but he's not moving. His hands grip the controls as he sits ensconced inside the mech. His posture sagging. Its glass charred by smoke.

Sonic saws the casing open like he did the Egg Destroyers, leaving the cockpit to crumple into halves. Coughing through sulfuric gusts, he drags him around the corner, away from the electrical fires still burning and the sprinklers exacerbating them under their relentless sheets.

He presses his ear to his ribcage. "C'mon, doc. Not now."

Nothing is beating. And so he hammers his balled fists down, again, again, an unresponsive chest cavity bucking against him.

_Come on, Egghead, I told ya I was joking about the whole kicking-the-bucket thing, don't make a liar outta me now_—

Eggman coughs and sputters and swears. He complains that his mustache got singed off, doesn't he know how_ long _it took him to grow back the _first _time? He gripes about those _useless _sprinklers, and he groans loudly how he must not be going to the happy place because his mech is destroyed. There's fire and fury, and that annoying hedgehog, face smudged with smoke, grinning like a fiend at him.


End file.
